


a lost american

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 00:56:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7736818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite his mother's insistence that anyone so superlatively admirable is an archetype and not a man - despite that, Sam has known heroes. (He's just never known them for long.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	a lost american

**Author's Note:**

> hansbekhart actually deserves credit for this (I think), with enough Sam posts on tumblr that I thought, "How could we twist Sam Wilson's past, the same way I have such fun twisting Bucky and Steve's?" And so we got this. Title stolen from the Brendan James song "Hero's Song," though I suppose it could have come from anywhere.
> 
> The main character death is Michael O'Reilly, and so hopefully shouldn't come as a surprise.

Sam never saw himself as a hero – not even when his father spat the word at him, the night Sam’s family took him out for dinner to celebrate his _summa cum laude_ degree and discovered that he’d applied for the USAF instead of the MA/PhD.

“Just an act of rebellion,” his mother said, because Sam’s mother had fifteen books on the ‘feminine in the masculine’ and ‘understanding Oedipal mirroring in a post-structural world’ and she’d written the last three. “Be glad he didn’t join a gang, Gerald.”

Sam was handpicked by the government halfway through Basic Training, plucked from ranks of exhausted young men and one woman – _the creation of masculinity through the oppression of the feminine_ , his mother would have said – and his new CO clapped him on the shoulder. “Your parents must be proud,” he said, and Wilson didn’t bother to inform the man that his parents expected him to come home with tattoos and bricks of cocaine.

He went home with a tattoo, the Falcon unit crest over his bicep, _virtute alisque_ above it, _No One Comes Close_ in the scroll below. His father sniffed and went back to his medical journals, and his mother asked if there had been a ceremony, perhaps some ritual consumption of alcohol in this process of attaining manhood in outdated ways.

Sam’s mother had sat them all down with articles on womanhood when Sam’s older sister had gotten her first period, the year Sam turned ten. They had celebrated the blossoming new stage in her life and each handed her something useful to help her on her path – Celeste had muttered to Sam that _new parents_ would be useful, but no one else heard – and Sam had never been so glad to be a boy, until his mother had suggested they hold a similar ceremony for everyone’s sexual awakening whenever that occurred.

Reilly, though. Reilly was always meant to be a hero. Michael O’Reilly was built like Captain America, over six feet tall with dark hair and a broad grin, bright eyes that crinkled at the corners even when he wasn’t smiling, dimples in his cheeks and a booming voice. There was something about Reilly’s face that made people take a second look, that kept the whole base staring for a little too long.

Reilly had designed the tattoos; he’d enlisted fresh out of high school, five years in the Force to Sam’s one, planned to fly until his wings or his heart gave way. His older brother had joined the Marines, like their Dad, and Reilly had gone for the Air Force to honor the grandfather who’d died over Nazi Germany. (At least, that’s what he told everyone who asked. After meeting Reilly’s older brother, Sam’s degree in psychology and Dr. Annette Cole Wilson’s books suggested that Reilly had joined the Air Force to harass his water-bound brother from the sky.)

Sam went home with Reilly for Thanksgiving the second year, because the first year Reilly had talked nonstop through long days in theater about his mother’s pie, and the Wilson family didn’t celebrate holidays that reified the genocide of minorities. (In fourth grade, Sam’s teacher had asked them to write an essay on Valentine’s Day, and Sam Wilson - with some maternal help - had argued that it glorified violence done to corporate Italian bodies. Ms. Kupperman had not been impressed.) Mrs. O’Reilly had met them at the door, completely dwarfed by her husband’s bulk and her American sons.

Embarrassingly, Sam had stood there with his mouth open for longer than the son of Drs. Cole Wilson should have, shocked to see Reilly sweep the tiny, smiling Asian woman into his arms and shout, “May!” (It was another year and several more dinners before Sam learned that Mrs. O’Reilly’s first name wasn’t ‘May,’ and that he’d been calling Reilly’s mother ‘mẹ’ since they’d first met.)

“I told you my parents met in ‘Nam, birdbrain,” Reilly laughed, taking in Sam’s speechlessness with his usual grin. “What did you think I meant?”

“I thought she was a nurse!” Sam defended himself, and felt his cheeks heat up when Mr. O’Reilly winked and said, “Oh, son, she _was_.”

It turned out that Mrs. O’Reilly made a mean Thanksgiving dinner and seemed unconcerned with the commemoration of cultural extermination. “It’s a good dinner,” she told him, when Sam asked, patting his cheek and spooning more gravy onto his plate. “All my kids home. I show you pictures later, my boys in school play. Mike was big turkey.”

Michael O’Reilly had indeed been a large turkey in his first grade play. Michael O’Reilly had been a hero, from the insults he had fought as a child – Reilly and his brother with their fists up on the playground, slant-eyed kids with the mother who couldn’t talk right, just like Sam had been the black kid in his private school, the kid that didn’t know how to be black when their mother made them volunteer at the youth center when he was a teen – to the wars he had tried to end at just eighteen.

The thing about heroes, though? They never stick around long enough to collect on the glory they’ve earned. Sam had stood on the stage next to Reilly’s brother, both of them buttoned into their military best and choking for air, the wrong Reilly accepting the cold, metallic honors meant for his little brother’s chest while their mother sobbed against Mr. O’Reilly’s shirt.

 

Sam meets Steve Rogers in July and goes on the run a week later, phones home from a burner phone to let his parents know he’s all right. Dr. Annette Cole Wilson wants to know if this new rebellion against the government is to reinforce the boundaries of masculinity in a militaristic setting, and Dr. Gerald Wilson tells them to stop by and stock the first aid kit before they go.

In November, he puts down his gun and shakes off his wings and brings the team to _mẹ_ ’s. “Where are we going?” Steve asks, broad shoulders and a hero’s bright eyes.

“To look at some pictures of a big turkey,” Sam tells him, rubbing at the wings of his tattoo. “And eat some pie.”

Mrs. O’Reilly meets them at the door, light as a feather when Sam scoops her into his arms, a soft smile for the pack of fugitives behind him, vivid aubergine lipstick and her son’s twinkling eyes. “You stay for dinner,” she commands, beckoning them in, reaching up to pat Sam on the cheek, rubbing her thumb at the damp spot under his eye. “All my kids come home.”


End file.
